The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine

A rollicking tale of the American wild and its spoils, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is at once an adventure in hunting and gathering and a visceral experience of the distance between ourselves and the food we love. After stumbling upon Auguste Escoffier’s 1903 culinary milestone Le Guide Culinaire, outdoorsman, avid hunter, and nature writer Steven Rinella embarks on an unusual quest: to procure all necessary ingredients for a forty-five-course meal, born entirely of Escoffier’s esoteric wild game recipes.

For one year, Rinella traverses the country assembling his feast—fishing for stingrays in Florida, flying cross-country to Michigan to obtain a fifteen-pound snapping turtle, and hunting mountain goats in Alaska. While in pursuit of his ingredients, Rinella encounters colorful characters, introduces his vegetarian girlfriend to the lifestyle and dishes of a huntsman, and comes to terms with the loss of his lifelong (if not culinary) mentor, his father. The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is a delicious, absorbing account of one man’s relationship with his family, friends, food, and, of course, the natural world.

Reviews

If Jack Kerouac had hung out with Julia Child instead of Neal Cassady, this book might have been written 50 years ago. As it is, outdoorsman and travel writer Steven Rinella brings bohemian flair and flashes of poetic sensibility to his picaresque tale of a man, a cookbook and the culinary open road. - Wall Street Journal

[A] warped, wonderful memoir of cooking and eating…Rinella recounts these madcap wilderness adventures with delicious verve and charm. - Men’s Journal

Rinella, who grew up hunting, fishing and scavenging, will kill and eat anything. If you're a vegetarian, like his long-suffering girlfriend, this isn't your book, but if you rue the "depersonalization of food production," or you're tired of chemical ingredients, he will make you howl. - L.A. Times

In his new book, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, hunter and writer Steven Rinella, 32, offers a completely unexpected perspective on the link between food and its origin in the natural world… [he] has developed a cult following, from fellow hunters to chefs who love his thrifty approach to cooking. - Food & Wine

With rod and gun, he set out to gather the ingredients needed to stage a five-day banquet featuring 45 of Escoffier's dishes. Darned if he doesn't pull it off, right down to the carpe 'a l'ancienne. It's not quite "Babette's Feast," but then Babette did not have to stuff half a duck into an antelope bladder. - New York Times

“Steven Rinella’s The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is a walk on the wild side of hunting and gathering. It’s sure to repel a few professional food sissies but attract many more with its sheer in-your-face energy and fine storytelling.” – Jim Harrison

Part food memoir, part hairy-chest hunting adventure, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine turns out to be one of the most unlikely enjoyments of the literary season. – January Magazine

“Here is a wonderful young writer everybody should know about. Steven Rinella is exciting, adventurous, technically gifted, honest, funny – a great new voice in American nonfiction.” – Ian Frazier

Rinella is a Michigan native raised with a love and respect for nature, an avid hunter and fisherman, and a piss-poor rancher of domestic pigeons. He weaves a story full of vivid and funny prose: Picture Julie Powell's Julie and Julia on megatestosterone. Historical narratives surface throughout, loaded with interesting morsels and background lore, and he builds tension like an accomplished mystery writer. It's a blend of cooking school, field biology, culinary philosophy, travelogue, and outdoor adventure, while he brilliantly addresses the sharp disconnect between Americans and their food supply. With this, his first book, Rinella proves himself an author on par with greats such as Jim Harrison, Tim Cahill, and John Gierach. – Austin Chronicle

This unusual memoir could serve as a tasty gift for sporting types. – Publisher’s Weekly

Crackling with enthusiasm and energy, alive with honest curiosity, here’s a book that’s an altogether unexpected kind of creature: Adventure writing ameliorated by cooking school and natural history, with maybe a soupcon of ethical philosophy thrown in for the salt. – New West

Rinella's narrative is an eye-opener, giving the reader a good look at the natural world and a better understanding of that adage, “You are what you eat.” – San Diego Union-Tribune

A captivating culinary project…hilarious… The author never indulges in ideological ranting, but readers will inevitably find themselves thinking about how radically removed most of us are from the sources of the food we eat. - Kirkus Reviews

“Rinella’s Low Road to High Culture is a delight; startling, hilarious, tastier than a bag of squirrel McNuggets.” – Fred Haefele, author of Rebuilding the Indian

"The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine is more than the story of an epic feast, it is a heartfelt and humorous tribute to wild places and the creatures that inhabit those places. Rinella is to be commended for this passionate tale of the lives and deaths of the things that nourish him. This is the best book I've read in a long, long time.” – Tom Groneberg, author of One Good Horse and The Secret Life of Cowboys